Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Fort Itaipu and Olavo Fontes Revisited

My
recent postings on Fort Itaipu has ignited a firestorm of controversy. Well,
not exactly. It sparked a semi-heated debate about the incident that seems to
be more directed at the use of the term “fraudulent” in conjunction with
information developed by Dr. Olavo Fontes than it was the facts of the case. It
seems the alleged “character assassination” of Fontes was the source of the
annoyance.

Dr. Olavo Fontes

Given
this minor flap, and two different interpretations of a single article, I
thought I would revisit this case because, frankly, I had no dog in the fight.
I am more interested in getting to the bottom of a story than I am in sticking
to a theory that might be in error.

Although
it is often overlooked in the various accounts of the events and mentioned
almost in passing in others, in the early morning of November 4, 1957, the
pilot of a cargo plane, Captain Jean Vincent de Beyssac, reported that he saw a
red light to his left. As the light seemed to grow, de Beyssac decided to
investigate but as he turned toward it, the light suddenly jumped in size
suggesting it had come closer. At that moment the aircraft’s automatic
direction finder (ADF), the right generator and the transmitter burned out. The
UFO vanished at that point.

Frank
Edwards, in Flying Saucers – Serious
Business devoted just over two pages to this sighting. He then noted that
one of “those well-documented ‘heat cases’ took place in Brazil on the same
night” as de Beyssac’s encounter. Edwards provided no source for his two paragraph
report on Fort Itaipu and no documentation for it, but a good guess would be
that he was following the path provided by NICAP. This lead back to APRO and
Fontes because there is nothing new in that account. Note, however, this is
speculation based on Edwards’ relation with Donald Keyhoe and NICAP.

Some
forty minutes after Beyssac saw his UFO, and according Dr. Olavo Fontes
Teixeira, at Fort Itaipu, on the Atlantic coast of Brazil, two sentries spotted
a bright orange “star” appear in the cloudless sky. “The whole garrison was
sleeping in peace. Two sentries were on duty on top of the military
fortifications. They were common soldiers, they did not know that flying
saucers existed.” I could ask how he knows this since he never interviewed them
but will let that go for now.

The
light raced toward the fort and stopped overhead then began drifting down. The
reports suggest that it was large, disc-shaped and surrounded by an orange
glow. They heard a hum coming from it and the sentries were then hit by some sort
of heat wave. Fontes reported, “The sentries were frozen on the ground, their
eyes wide with surprise, the Tommy guns hung limply from their hands like dead
things.” (And I can’t resist on saying that this is some really lousy writing.)

Fontes
continued, “The sentinels were startled, unable to think what to do about the
UAO.” [I interject here that it would be logical for them to alert the corporal
of the guard or the sergeant of the guard… SOP] … Then something hot touched
their faces (one of them thinks he heard a faint whining sound he could not
identify at that same moment). [parens in the original].”

Fontes
goes on saying that one of the sentries later reported that “when the heat
engulfed him it was like a fire burning all over his clothes.” At that point
blind panic “yammered at him.” He staggered around, attempting to escape from
the heat that he believed was burning him alive. He blacked out at some point.
(I will note here, again, that neither of the sentries was ever interviewed,
and those soldiers who were in the fort that night and who were interviewed
provided no information to suggest this description is accurate.)

Fontes
wrote that the other sentry also had the feeling his clothes were on fire. He
began to scream, horribly, while running and stumbling and crying. He didn’t
know what he was doing but found some shelter under one of the cannon
emplacements. Fontes wrote that his cries were so loud that they woke the rest
of the garrison.

Apparently
things were no better in the living quarters of the soldiers. There, according
to Fontes, “everything was confusion.” While no one seemed to have a clue as to
what to do, the lights went out (and yes, this is my interpretation of what
Fontes was suggesting, boiled down so that we can move along). The power
failed, and even the backup generators failed. Fontes provided a long list of
things that were going on and tells us that there was fear on every face… I’m
sorry but this strikes me as hyperbole regardless of the unusual, strange, and
frightening situation.

Fontes
wrote that the event lasted about three minutes. He said that the next day the
fort commander ordered no one to talk about what had happened or what had been
seen. The injured soldiers were being treated for their burns and the fort was
placed under martial law which seems a strange thing to have said since, as a
military installation, it would already be under martial law.

Fontes
claimed that officers from the U.S. military mission arrived to investigate.
They were accompanied by officers of the Brazilian Air Force, and learned that intelligence
officers, apparently from the fort, were in charge of the investigation.

According
to Fontes, some three weeks after the sighting, he was contacted by one of the
officers who knew of his, Fontes’, interest in UAOs. Fontes refused to give the name because the
officer feared some sort of repercussions for revealing information that had
apparently been classified by his commanding officer. This first leak was not
enough, for Fontes, and he said nothing about it for two months when three
other officers from the Brazilian Army who had been there that night told their
tale. It seems that Fontes contacted them, though this isn’t clear in his first
article if this was the case. They did, however, according to him, confirm the
details.

This
then is a rough outline of the story as originally told by Fontes. What I
sometimes do, as those who visit here regularly know, is chase the footnotes. I
have said that the story, in all its various forms, meaning the attack on the
fort as opposed to the sighting of an orange object, comes from Fontes. Let’s
see how that works with this one. Richard Dolan in his UFOs and the National Security State reported on the case on page
203. He doesn’t provide much in the way of detail and his footnote takes us to
Don Keyhoe’s Flying Saucers Top Secret,
Jerome Clark’s The Emergence of a
Phenomenon: UFOs from the Beginning through 1959 and to Jacques Vallee’s Passport to Magonia. Both Keyhoe and
Vallee also

APRO's Coral Lorenzen

mentioned the case in other books, Keyhoe in Aliens from Space and Vallee in Anatomy
of a Phenomenon. Vallee’s footnotes take us to Coral Lorenzen and her TheGreat
Flying Saucer Hoax (which was later published as Flying Saucers: The Startling Evidence of Invasion from Outer Space)
which, of course, takes us to Fontes and his report from the APRO Bulletin. Clark takes us to both
Fontes and Lorenzen.

Keyhoe
adds a detail that is interesting. According to him, “Since the United States
had far more knowledge of UFOs, the high Brazilian officers asked the American
Embassy for help in their investigation. As soon as possible, U.S. Army and Air
Force officers were flown to the fort, accompanied by Brazilian Air Force
investigators.”

This,
I believe, is supposition by Keyhoe. Fontes mentions that military mission
members, meaning, I would guess, the American Embassy military attaches,
accompanied the Brazilian Air Force officers, but there is no mention of a
request for help. Given the circumstances as outlined by Fontes, there would be
no way for the Americans to know of the attack, so a request is logical given
these circumstances.

There
nothing to tell us Keyhoe’s source. However, Richard Hall who compiled The UFO Evidence for NICAP, the
organization that had Keyhoe as its director, mentioned the case in two places.
According to the footnote, his information came from the APRO Bulletin which was where the information was first published
in the United States. Fontes was the author of that report. He also references it
in another section with little detail and no footnote. It seems clear that
Keyhoe used the Fontes information in his analysis of the case because it is
obvious that NICAP had the information in their files.

Although
the story was carried in a variety of UFO books over the years, there seemed to
be nothing new to it. No names of witnesses surfaced and inquiries to the fort
produced no corroboration. Magazines in Brazil did mention the case, provided
several dates for the event and little in additional detail. Given the number
of dates, it was difficult to find any sort of corroboration.

Over
the years a number of UFO investigators attempted to learn more even
though the date was in question. The case was carried in the Flying Saucer Review of January 1960 which is a rehash of the APRO Bulletin article, which is to say, it is traced back to Fontes. An analysis of the information was published at http://thebiggeststudy.blogspot.com/2010/04/flying-saucer-review-volume-6.html. Here is was noted:

I
have a small discomfort zone about Fontes. The three great Rio UFO researchers
[identified in the text as [Auriphebo Berrance] Simoes, [Flavio Augusto] Periera,
[Jose Escobar] Faria] knew Fontes well and liked him. I believe they felt he
was an honest man. But they thought that he was a bit “enthusiastic” about his
research. Just due to that, I take Fontes’ cases with more discretion than some
others. Ft. Itaipu is one such instance…

Fontes
heard about the case from a military friend on the condition of anonymity [this
is quite possible, as there were Brazilian officers high up who would talk to
the Rio guys often]. [The brackets appear in the original text]. Fontes said
that he could not use his medical doctor status to get entry to the hospital,
but did find out that the burns were severe and over about 10% of the bodies.
Later he said that he got confirmation of the affair from three other
personnel.

This
incident could [emphasis in original]
have happened. If so, it would be a very rare incident of severe damage to a
witness.

This
is the first reference that I can find that suggests that Fontes might have
been less than candid in his reporting. Although they use the term “enthusiastic”
to describe some of his research, it also suggests that he might exaggerate the
claims or embellish them for dramatic effect. This is not an allegation that he
was inventing details, only that he was providing his own analysis that might
not have been overly supported by the information he had. In another arena and
another subject it might be best described as literary license. The information
is an extrapolation from the apparent facts but that extrapolation might not be
accurate

and without names, there is no way of knowing what Fontes might have
been told and what additions he might have made.

More
research was conducted over the years as outlined by an article written by
Edison Boaventura. One of the first things that he accomplished through a FOIA
request was a document from the Brazilian Embassy in the United States. It
said:

At
two o’clock on the morning of November 4, 1957, in Fort Itaipu, located in the
vicinity of Santos, Sao Paulo [Brazil], according to a Report by Dr. Olavo
Fontes, two guards where [sic] on watch duty at the top of the highest lookcout
[sic] tower facing the ocean. Suddenly an orange color light appeared and
quickly positioned itself at approximately 50 meters about the guards. With
inoperable automatic weapons, they watched the starange [sic] glow and high
pitched noise emerging from the strange object. Suddenly the two guards were
hit by an intolerable heat wave, knocking one of the guards unconscious. The
other thought himself to be in flames, and screamed to alert the others. The
troops in the Fort quickly became alarmed due to a failure of all the power
systems, including lights, elevators and weapons. Three minutes later the power
returned with many officers claiming to have seen the strange object rapidally
[sic] climb towards the sky. The two guards sustained first and second degree
burns over 10% of their bodies. The alarm system and the automatic electric
clocks which were originally set for 5 am, went off at 2:30 of the same
morning. After the incident the Fort was shut down and investigations by the
Brazilian Secret Police and afterwards by North American Officials was
conducted. The results were not made available.

There
wasn’t much new in the document, other than a mention of the Brazilian Secret
Police being involved and the alarm clocks ringing early. As mentioned in the
document, the information came from the same source as all the other
information, that is Fontes. There is nothing to suggest that anyone else provided
any information to the report. Boaventura noted, “Interestingly, the document
that briefly brought the episode [to their attention] did not contain the names
of the military, only the name of Dr. Fontes and also there was no sign of
anyone who could identify the source of the document.”

Boaventura
did search for other documentation including newspaper or magazine articles
published at the time. According to him:

Through
research I conducted at the National Library of Rio de Janeiro I found four
unique stories of Robert E. Sullivan, published in the defunct magazine MundoIlustrado (Nos 50, 51, 52 and 53 -
Period November – December 1958 [or one year after the reported incident
though it seems that only one article mentioned Fort Itaipu]) that allows us to
glimpse the setting in which it occurred…

The
second issue of the journal “Mundo
Ilustrado”, entitled “Operation outer vast proportions over the planet as a
show of force [the translation of some of the article is not in precise
English] found on page 26… [was] information that multiple installations of the
Brazilian Army had been overflown… Itaipu, in Santos, Sao Paulo (5 or 6 Nov) …

Boaventura
goes on to explain that most of the sightings can be explained but that two of
them are without explanation. He’s not sure which two but that Fort Itaipu
might be one of them. There is one passage that said, “One of these, which was
not reported in the press, particularly [in] stunning detail, able to shake the
most stubborn of skeptics.”

In
the four articles, there is nothing more about the alleged incident at Fort
Itaipu. The date given for it is wrong if the November 4 date is accepted and
there is the question about which of the sightings Sullivan thought were
reliable. It is apparently confusing and it is only a guess that Fort Itaipu is
one of them.

Boaventura
said that he had searched for years in national and local newspapers and in
magazines for the original story. The best he could do was a paragraph in O Cruzeiro magazine on February 22,
1958. Again the information is confusing, but it seemed to say, “On November 2,
1957, another ‘unidentified aerial object’ evolved over Fort Itaipu, in Sao
Vicente (Sao Paulo), for more than five minutes seen by officialdom. The commander
ordered a secret report on the case.”

On
May 24, 1958, the magazine apparently reprinted those few lines and added that
the case “would have been witnessed by officers and the Commander of the fort
itself, can not be described in detail, since it was not officially confirmed
by those authorities. Informed sources assure that the captain ordered
preparation of a secret report about [it]. They also say that electric devices
suffered interference, having been paralyzed. For our part, though, nothing we
can say because we have not authorized statement that support us, restricting
us, so that to declare the incident as it was reported including the press of
Sao Vicente (Sao Paulo).” Yes, the translation is confusing but seems to
suggest, at least to me, that they have no authorized statement from the fort
and no confirmation of the story.

This
seems to be the only references to anything at the fort until the publication
of the report in the APRO Bulletin.
Fontes is the author of it, with all the added details with which we are now
familiar. Other than additional writers and researchers repeating the story as
told by Fontes, it seemed that no one else attempted to learn anything new
about it or even tried to verify it. The mention in Flying Saucer Review, for example, can be traced back to Fontes who
was, at the time, the APRO representative in Brazil.

Several
years after the turn of the century, or in other words, some fifty years later,
Boaventura began searching for the soldiers who had been in the fort on the
night of the attack. Eventually he would receive a list of some four hundred
soldiers who were there.

He
interviewed Captain Galileo Ramos, who had served for 30 years at the fort, and
who said that one of the soldiers burned had not survived. He also said that
due to the intensity of the heat, the barrel of one of the rifles was twisted. The
critical question asked by Boaventura was if Ramos knew the names of the burned
soldiers but he said that he didn’t. He had heard the story told by others.
What had seemed to be important information added by an officer who might have
been there (it is not clear from the story if Ramos had been at the fort in
1957) turned out to be something that had been told to him by another soldier.
He had not witnessed the event.

Boaventura
interviewed a sergeant who told him of another soldier who had been there on
that night, but the soldier had only seen a UFO. That object descended to the
horizon, made a number of zigzag maneuvers and then disappeared at high speed.
Apparently he did not witness the burning of the soldiers but did search for
“some logical explanation for the fact, but was not successful.”

On
January 25, 2008, Boaventura talked with Lieutenant Azevedo, who apparently was
currently one of the public affairs officers at the fort who confirmed the
story. He also said that rifle with the twisted barrel was in the History
Museum of the Rio de Janeiro Army. He said that there had been a blackout and
that one of the soldiers was burned, rolling on the floor while the other was
unconscious. He said, “I’ve never seen, but several cases have happened in the
fort [There is a record of UFO sightings around the area in November 1957 but
these are merely sightings]. About the soldiers report that both were treated
at the clinic of the Unit that is currently not located in the same place.” Of
course, in the confusing translation of the story, it seems that Azevedo was
saying that he hadn’t witnessed any of this and that he did not know the names
of any of the soldiers involved. He was repeating something he had heard.

Boaventura
attempted to follow the trail of the rifle with the twisted barrel. He visited
the museum but didn’t find it on display. He wrote to the museum about that and
asked for a picture of it and on March 17, 2008, he learned that no evidence
was found after a search by those in the museum but they would continue to
search and if anything was discovered, Boaventura would be informed. If the
rifle ever existed, it was nowhere to be found and the logical conclusion is
that it never did given the way the information appeared in the story decades
later.

Boaventura
found others who had served at the fort and while some of them had heard the
details of the case, it was never clear when they heard them. He found no one
who had actually witnessed them. The son of one of the commanding officers said
that his father had mentioned a UFO sighting but didn’t say a thing about
soldiers who were injured. The son hadn’t seen anything himself.

Specifically,
the son of the commander told Brazilian researchers on June 13, 2016 and in an
email provided to me, “I can say, without a doubt that this fact is true,
because I am the son of Adston Pompeu Piza, at the time commander of Fort of
Itaipu. This sighting occurred at the beginning of November 1957, reported by
my father to me, my brother and my mother. My sister at the time was a baby.
This was related by my father to us numerous times and out relatives and
friends who frequented our house. The repair to be done was never heard, and I
heard hundreds of times this account, is that never heard my father talk about
the soldiers suffered burns.” Or, in other words, there had been a UFO
sighting, but all the additional details, about the burned soldiers and melted
rifle barrels was not confirmed. In fact, MundoIlustrado lists several sightings in
the Sao Paulo area and near various Army installations in November and
December, 1957, which might account for what the son had been told.

Boaventura
didn’t find anyone who had been in the fort on the dates in question who had
witnessed the event as described by Fontes. He wrote to nearly two hundred of
the soldiers whose names he had and universally, none could report anything on
a first-hand basis. He wrote, “Unanimously, all contacts I got from April [which
is to say the first batch of responses he received] from these former soldiers
were to report they knew nothing…”

One
of the contacts, Jose Castello who had served in the Army for 37 years wrote,
“Unfortunately, I could not have any real information about the case, despite
having talked to several friends who served with me at that time. In 1957 I was
a soldier at Fort Itaipu and served in Battery Command and we’ve heard this
rumor and we took it in jest. Unfortunately, there is nothing real in this
story.”

In
an unfortunate twist that sparked the controversy here, Boaventura quoted an
unidentified source about the case or rather Fontes’ investigation of it.
According to Boaventura, in April 2008, he spoke with this unidentified
researcher (though I do now know who it was, I’ll respect his request as well
which means you all are free to reject it because there is no name attached) in
Brazil who said, “First, I ask that you keep me anonymous because it is not
pleasant what I’m talking about… Dr. Fontes invented the story to make his name
in the United States, as he was well connected with the American investigators
of APRO, one, [though this is not clear in the translation] forged document
embassy in English. So much so, that he neither signed the alleged official
document. So he made up other cases too, to satisfy [his] ego and gain
notoriety. As for other classic cases he researched I cannot give my opinion,
but the case of Fortaleza Itaipu is invented for sure. Why nobody knows the
name of the soldiers! You are wasting your time.”

Boaventura
did contact one of the former commanders at the fort, Colonel Erasmo Antonio
Dias, who said that he knew nothing about it but suggested Boaventura contact
another officer who also had commanded at the fort. Lieutenant Colonel Osman
Ribeiro de Moura. He was old, infirm, but did confirm a UFO sighting at Duque
de Caxias, the city in which the fort is located which is a suburb of Sao Paulo.
But… “could not remember details of the episode and could not inform about the
burned soldiers, neither knew the name of them.”

This
could be, I suppose, a hint that the story is true because of the way the
sentences are phrased. I would suggest it means that there were no burned
soldiers so there were no names to be remembered. However, and again we run
into translation problems. It seems that in April 2008, Boaventura received a
telephone call from Colonel Erasmus Days [which is, of course, the English
translation of Dias] who said, “Actually, I was commander of Fortaleza Itaipu
and I am a living witness of the history of our country, but never heard of
this case. It is absurd and should be a legend.”

What
he is confirming here is that there had been UFO sightings in the area, which
included a suburb of Sao Paulo where the fort stands but that there was no
incident that involved sentries who were burned or blackouts and failures of
equipment at the fort. We have something seen in the air which might have
approached the fort, but we do not have the other elements that were introduced
by Fontes.

So,
here’s where we are in this case. All the information seems to trace back to
the short, vague magazine articles which only seem to mention a sighting and the
more robust information supplied by Fontes. While some of the soldiers
interviewed said that they had heard of the case, not one of them said that he
saw anything personally, though some were stationed at the fort at the time.
The names of the injured soldiers have never been learned, there is no
documentation about the case other than those magazine articles that are vague
at best, refer only to UFO sightings in the area and suggestions by those in
Brazil who investigated that the case is a hoax.

There
are hints that Fontes had been less than candid in his reporting. Boaventura
reported on a telephone call with a colleague who said that Fontes had invented
the case for his own aggrandizement. But we don’t have the name of that
researcher. We do, however, have the names of three other Brazilian UFO
investigators, Simoes, Periera and Faria who were contemporaries of Fontes and
who said that he was “enthusiastic” about his UFO cases. That can be
interpreted in many ways, such as suggesting he didn’t follow negative leads to
his introducing hyperbole into a tale to make it more exciting. However, it
does seem that Fontes’ reputation in Brazil was not the best and there are
multiple, named witnesses to that.

The
alleged physical evidence can’t be located. Although Boaventura attempted to
find the twisted rifle, he did not see it on his tour of the museum where it
was supposedly housed. While everyone knows that the vast majority of the items
in a museum’s collection are not on display, Boaventura did work with the
archivist who would have had access to everything, and according to the
documentation available, the rifle was not housed there. He said he would alert
Boaventura if he found anything, but that has yet to happen.

No
military records have been found to even confirm a UFO sighting at the fort on
any of the dates offered though there were UFO reports in the area on a number
of days near the fort and in the city associated with it, which might explain
the multiple dates. The magazine articles are generic with few details,
multiple dates for the sighting and no hint of any sort of power blackout or
injuries to soldiers at the fort, which is no real corroboration for the tale.

Normally
I would suggest that such a case like this be reduced to a footnote, but even
that might be misleading. The evidence is so thin as to be nearly nonexistent
and the only witness testimony is second hand at best and is based on what
others might have said. We have no idea how much circulation the tale had in
Brazil after Fontes reported it to Coral Lorenzen at APRO and the rumors heard
might have originated there. This case is so poor, it should be erased from the
UFO literature, but, naturally, it is too late for that. It will live on simply
because it was widely reported in UFO books around the world. We should listen
to our colleagues in Brazil who are suggesting that there is nothing to it…
but, of course, that will never happen.

Which 'Flying Saucer Review' are you talking about in your reference to the case? I could not find it in the latter issues of 1960. There was an article on Fort Itaipu in Jan-Feb 1960 of FSR by a Jules Lemaitre (pseudonym for French UFOlogist/astronomer Pierre Guerin, I think), but he only copied what Fontes first wrote in APRO. He took it seriously at the time, as presumably, did everyone else.

Thank you for the very detailed review of the evidence for this case. This is one of many thorough case reviews you have presented and in more challenging cases the blog also provides a very useful forum for discussion which can sometimes take things forward ( the discussions on the McMinville photos and the Tremonton film a while ago spring to mind, for example, to pick two examples where the balance of evidence went in opposite directions).One of the shocking things is to note the list of authors that have repeated this tale. To err is to be human and I doubt any book will ever be totally error free but whilst one of the names on the list of authors doesn't surprise me others do. That highlights how careful we need to be before accepting cases as evidence and the value of your blog.

In fact it was the article I cited (Jan/Feb 1960 by Jules Lemaitre) that described the case. That front cover illustration of Sept/Oct was merely one picked from 1960 as an example of an FSR cover. The story was printed in January. As you say the Brazilian writer, summarising in 2010, reflects your views that the case somehow does not ring true. Lemaitre (Pierre Guerin) merely lifted the tale from a Fontes article in the APRO Bulletin a few months earlier.

It is assumed by other writers and investigators that information as published is accurate. Given my long history in this field, I know many people and can contact them to make sure the information is accurate. Others just assume that if they find the information repeated in several sources, that information is accurate, which is why I started chasing footnotes... too often I have found that the original information is not the same as that printed later. Too often there is an acceptance that the original investigator or researcher followed all the leads but many times they did not. Sometimes personal bias gets in the way. Today, following up is much easier than it was even 15 years ago... most of the writers did the best they could given that telephone calls cost money, trips to the library were time consuming and the sources of information weren't as readily available as they are today. But, given all that, we all should be attempting to find the truth rather than our version of the truth.

CDA -

Thanks for the clarification... I have updated the article to make it more accurate.

I agree that this case is extremely thin, but it reminds me of the Kerman, Ca. case in which an orange object was said to have produced burns on Police Officer Manuel Amparano. You had at least three previous blogs on this case so I'm not looking for further discussion.Unlike the Fort Itaipu case it did have documentation and a living witness. Can they be related? I don't know.

There is one passage that said, “One of these, which was not reported in the press, particularly [in] stunning detail, able to shake the most stubborn of skeptics.” (apparently referring to the Fort Itaipu case)

I did want to note that the passage above was optimistic to the extreme given the venom spewed by debunkers toward Mr. Amparano.

You have noted the differences between the Fort Itaipu event and that from Kerman, California... that is, we have the names and documents that confirm an event in Kerman, and we have nothing to show that the soldiers were burned in Brazil. The two case, however, are not related.

Great work [as usual] Kevin.The sad thing about this whole iffy charlatanistic exercise in headline grabbing bilk , is that I was pretty well taken in by 'Dr Olavo Fontes' and erroneously had been affording the guy a degree of credibility that he patently does not deserve. ..I'm beginning to think that i'll never shed this penchant for simple gullibility!